


road to ruin

by all_soul, be_the_good_guys



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Awesome Wanda Maximoff, BAMF Natasha Romanov, BAMF Pepper Potts, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton Is a Good Bro, F/M, Fix-It, Mental Health Issues, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Lives, Paralysis, Past Relationship(s), Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon Fix-It, Sad with a Happy Ending, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Time Travel, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Wanda Maximoff & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2020-07-09 10:49:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19886365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_soul/pseuds/all_soul, https://archiveofourown.org/users/be_the_good_guys/pseuds/be_the_good_guys
Summary: "That we would think of meddling with death in the first place, it’s… ludicrous. Let’s say we did find a way to bring Nat back. Then what? How far do we take this? Does that mean we bring Tony back, too? What about Vis? And Pietro? Because they didn’t deserve to die, either."We're leaving this one unfinished, super sorry, folks





	1. funeral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> God, two in two days. Two out of three people he’d allowed himself.

Virginia Pepper Potts is a wonder, Bruce thought to himself, studying her from a distance. Barely a week after watching her husband die and she stood on the front porch of the cabin she and Tony had called home, brought a child into, radiating enough composure to make up for everyone else’s lack. It was Tony’s funeral. Even Bruce felt himself falling apart in a way he hadn’t in a long time. But the sun was setting, and the soft glow of Tony Stark’s heart was barely visible before the horizon. Bruce stood alone on the dock and silently bid goodbye to his old friend.

Those who were not staying at the house filed into the waiting cars. Bruce watched May Parker lead a tearful Peter toward one at the end, a hand resting on his back. Poor kid. Bruce had caught a glimpse of a photo in Tony’s kitchen during the brief and quiet lunch after the funeral. Tony and Peter stood holding a certificate (upside down), Tony looking happier than Bruce recalled seeing him in years. That kid brought something out in Tony that Bruce had only ever seen in fiction. It was uncanny how instantaneously Peter had become something of a son to Tony - at least according to May. Bruce wished desperately that he could’ve congratulated his friend. Maybe before he would have been affronted that Tony had dragged a child into a fight, but not now.

Staying away for so long, for only the second time since 2017, felt like a mistake. Since leaving the Avengers in 2015, he’d only regretted his excursion once. After his rather abrupt departure, he spent the next two years trapped in the Hulk. Parts of those two years were still coming back to him as his bond with Hulk strengthened. The line between them was blurring, and as it did, memories of Hulk-outs in years passed returned.

Sometimes he’d wake in the middle of the night remembering an alien army he’d fought off eleven years ago. In recent weeks he remembered his battles on Sakaar, and how he’d reveled in those victories. The stream of violent memories were ebbing, and fading into softer ones. Those, he could picture more clearly. The ones where he felt most like himself as the Hulk. Now instead of streaks of red or dust-clouded air he watched Tony’s eyes fly open as he himself roared him back to life. He saw Steve’s awe-struck joy as a portal closed in the sky. He recalled Natasha’s empty weight, limp in his arms as he carried her through the air. He’d felt useful then - _he_ had - from inside the Hulk. His time on Sakaar was purely Hulk’s joy, not Bruce’s. He’d faded, then. With the Avengers, Bruce himself had shone through. And he’d left them. And now he faced the consequences.

There was another boy on the dock. Standing with his feet hanging over the water, fists in his pockets, jaw clenched, shoulders squared, around Peter’s age but opposite in energy. Bruce knew anger like the back of his hand and this kid was seething. He glared out at the drifting arc reactor like it had personally offended him - and maybe it had. But when the sky darkened and there was nothing left of the reactor to glower at, he didn’t miss the boy’s sob, or his posture finally breaking. Bruce took it as a cue to head up to the house, leaving the boy to grieve in private; and wondering, as he trudged up the hill, just how many lives Tony Stark had touched. How many lives Nat had touched, and for once, not how many she had taken in comparison.

As Bruce approached, Happy Hogan carried a sleeping Morgan Stark into the house. Bruce caught a glimpse of the little girl as they disappeared inside, her dark hair partially obscuring her face. It revealed just enough of it for her - not asleep - to lock eyes with him. And in that fleeting moment, a shudder traveled down Bruce’s spine. Those were Tony’s eyes, glancing up at him from across the lab. Bruce looked away.

“Is that everyone?” A gentle voice interrupted his thoughts. Bruce turned to Pepper. From the dock, she stood tall above the sorrow of the event. But up close, Bruce could see her reddened eyes, her goosebumps, and her refusal to go inside for a jacket.  
He shook his head. “Almost. I left a kid down at the dock, he… it looked like he might be down there for a while.”

Pepper’s lips parted, a soft sigh escaping them. She closed her eyes and Bruce wondered how the universe could be so cruel to a woman who felt so deeply. Before he could ask if she wanted him to grab her a blanket she was descending the porch steps, murmuring something about going to talk to Harley.

Bruce stole one last glance out over the water, and started up the stairs. Warm light poured out from the windows, illuminating the trees and glittering on the water. It looked far too much like someone else’s home for Bruce to feel comfortable. Different from Tony’s other group-living solutions and so far from the rest of the world, entering the house felt like invading something sacred. He didn’t belong here. He stopped before the door, his shoulders sinking. An old habit from an old body. What would happen if he chose not to go in?

“ _I”ll persuade you_.”

Bruce’s head jerked up, knocking right into the wooden overhang. Clear as day he heard her voice. Saw the calmness in her eyes. Perfectly assured until she wasn’t. He gasped and grabbed his head - another old, unnecessary habit. He blinked a couple times, clearing the image which had burned so quickly in his vision. _Gone_. He wished it would return. Then, maybe he could pretend she was still here.

God, two in two days. Two out of three people he’d allowed himself.

Bruce took a deep breath, pushing open the door. Inside, he found Clint, Steve, and Wanda sitting by a crackling fire, bottles in hand. And bottles on the table. And floor.

Bruce couldn’t escape quickly enough.

“Dr. Banner!” Clint called a bit too loudly. Wanda swatted his arm.

“Hush. Tony’s little girl is sleeping,” she chided. Not counting two battles five years apart, Bruce hadn’t seen Wanda since Ultron, so it was surreal seeing her now. When they were fighting Ultron, she’d seemed so young. Not literally young like Peter Parker, but inexperienced enough to seem childish compared to the battle-hardened team she became part of. She’d mellowed out since he last saw her. Instead of vengeance, her eyes were filled with warmth and welcome. Grief though, had not gone. As much as she had changed, Bruce supposed she could not stop losing people. Or maybe there was more that Bruce missed that he didn’t feel comfortable asking about now that she looked at him.

Without thinking much about it, he grabbed one of the bottles off the table and took a swig. And another. He might as well have been drinking water for all the alcohol did to the Hulk’s metabolism, but he sat with the other three anyway. It was going to be a long night.

“Yeah, Bruce!” Clint whooped half-heartedly (thankfully lowering his volume) and clapped him on the shoulder. “Join the party, Doc.”

Steve acknowledged Bruce with a nod, but otherwise said nothing.

Bruce obliged, leaning against the mantel, head bowed under the low ceiling. He wasn’t used to looking down at the Captain, or at Clint for that matter. Or Clint having full sleeve tattoos.

“Have you all shrunk?” he said, hoisting a bottle between two fingers.

“Come on, man,” Clint said, lifting his own bottle. “Where was this spunk a couple years ago, huh?”

“The aether,” Bruce replied.

“There was plenty of _spunk_ back then too, Barton. Remember when you tried to choke me?” Wanda leveled Bruce in her gaze, and, again, there was humor there that seemed so strange.

“Don’t remind me,” he said. “And you stole Natasha’s jacket, you had it coming.”

Wanda fell silent. Clint regarded his bottle, and Steve stared at the floor. Wrong move.

“I still have it,” Wanda said, finally. Her face fell. “I took it with me when Vis and I lived in Scotland. It’s still there, or stolen, probably.”

Steve looked up with hardened eyes. This combined with his growing scruff aged him. Nobody in the room, Bruce supposed, was anything like they were when they all met. Everything had seemed so immense then. They really didn’t know anything at all. Tony had.

_That up there? That’s the endgame._

Tony had said it in a moment of frustration. The entire team doubting him, having released a killer A.I. on the world, he still believed that he was right. Bruce had doubted him. He was right, and Bruce had not believed him.

_Job’s not finished._

For her, it was that simple. When Bruce suggested ditching the mission, Natasha refused. She refused to back down, refused to let Clint die, refused to let the world down, no matter how many times it spat in her face. In the face of everything the world told her she was, she refused to accept it.

Bruce blinked, hard.

“I miss her,” he said.

Wanda nodded, eyes down in the bottle she held to her chest.

“We should have a funeral,” she said without looking up.

Bruce had thought about it. Receiving the invite to Tony’s, simplistic yet elegant in true Pepper Potts fashion, had planted the thought in his head. What would an event commemorating Natasha’s life look like? Who would plan it, Clint’s family? He’d thought attending Tony’s funeral would make Natasha’s easier to picture, but now he realized it only made it less real.

The setting, the people, formal attire, the grand send off and tears. Tony might have opted for fireworks, but it was a beautiful ceremony. What troubled Bruce most, however, were the photographs. They were everywhere, meticulously placed on the shelves, tables, mantle, contributed at Pepper’s request by guests. Countless photos with Morgan and Pepper. A few stiffer ones with his parents. Photos of him and Rhodey, arms around each other, set beside awkward selfies with Peter. There were even a few candids of Tony and Bruce himself working in the lab. So much Tony everywhere it was overwhelming.

Bruce didn’t think he’d ever seen a photo of Nat - he’d seen images of her in the newspaper and S.H.I.E.L.D. databases, but never real photos, like these, taken in moments where she was _living_. They had no photographs for a funeral; they didn’t even have a body to bury.

Clint cleared his throat, draining what was left of his bottle and setting it down on the table.

“A small one,” he said.

“I mean do we even know for sure that she’s dead?” Steve said, leaning forward in his chair.

Bruce looked at him incredulously.

“What the hell does that mean, Rogers?” Clint demanded. The comfortable atmosphere shattered.

“We don’t know anything about the stones, for all we know she could still be on that planet, alive. Illusions aren’t exactly new news to us,” Steve said.

“She’s dead, Rogers, I _watched_ her _die_!” Clint spat, staggering to his feet and rearing on Steve.

“Clint-” Wanda began,

“She threw herself off that cliff for us and you think she didn’t do it well enough?! You and your buddies might be able to survive a fall like that, but she threw all 130 pounds of her unenhanced body down there and I _heard_ her hit the ground! What kind of-”

“Clint!” Bruce said, stepping between him and Steve. “No one’s saying that.”

“For God’s sake, _move_ , Banner, I thought you cared about Nat!”

Bruce winced, but didn’t move.

Clint fell back onto the sofa, snatching an unopened beer and popping it. He took a deep swig and let his head roll over to face Steve.

“You have some nerve.”

“And a point.” Wanda set her bottle down and drew her legs up onto the couch. She stared into the hearth.

Clint chuckled hoarsely, though frustration simmering beneath the laughter was unmistakable.

“Shit, Wanda, not you too-”

“I’m being serious,” she said, glancing back at him. “I mean, what do we know about the soul stone? Vision… the mind stone _was_ Vis, and he barely knew it’s properties.”

“Are you saying you think there’s a loophole?” Steve asked, his gaze shifting from her to Clint, who said nothing.

“For an element with powers that vast, it’s entirely possible,” Bruce said, surprising himself. He didn’t want to join this conversation, give himself hope. Hell, the alcohol must be getting to him after all, because despite his anxieties he continued. “Before, we were desperate, and out of time. Now we have access to time travel, and people like Stephen Strange who understand the stones like we never could.”

“And the possibility of destroying everything Tony and Nat died for in the first place,” Wanda added in a low tone.

“Ohhh, okay.” Clint’s head fell back. “We’re dragging Tony into this now. Good thing we’re at his funeral, why don’t we go let Pepper and her five-year-old know that we’re going to magically poof her husband back to life, because it never ends, right? It’s just a never ending cycle of sacrifice and redemption for you guys. Tell you what,” he stood up abruptly, setting his bottle down. “Do whatever you want to reverse Nat being dead. I’m gonna go find my family, and pray to God they don’t turn to dust again because you three don’t know when to stop.”

Before any of them could say anything, Clint had left the room.


	2. morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We're doing this, aren't we."

Bruce’s head hurt. He had fallen asleep leaning against the fireplace, his neck at a horrible angle. He jolted awake, blinking blearily. A chilling breeze blew through the open window, whispering through the curtain. Brisk light filled the room, even, but blinding.

He groaned, stretching out with a yawn.

Steve too, started awake, his foot hitting Wanda’s hand; waking her with a start.

Bruce ignored the subsequent groans for coffee, glancing down at a piece of paper on the floor.

_ Rescue ideas,  _ it read, in Bruce’s own handwriting,  _ trick Redskull, go back in time and trick Redskull, kick Redskull in the nuts until he willingly hands over Natasha, go back in time and kill baby Thanos-  _ Bruce stopped reading.

He picked up the list and folded it, stashing it in his breast pocket before the others could notice. He’d recycle it later, just as soon as he got some coffee, and maybe a mega-dose of Advil.

He heard footsteps padding down the hall but didn’t register them until the accompanying tiny-figure stood in the doorway. “Hi,” she said shyly.

The clock on the wall read 5:41 AM but Morgan Stark was dressed and wide awake.

“Oh, uh-” Bruce began hastily gathering the bottles still-littered everywhere, joined by a bleary-eyed Steve. “Hey- Kiddo… You’re, um. Up early. Is… Is your mom up too?”

“Nope.” The little girl fixed him and Steve with a sharp, curious look that reminded him so much of Tony he nearly dropped a bottle. “Just me.”

“Okay,” Steve said gruffly before clearing his throat. “That’s good, we should let Pepper sleep.”

“Good morning, Morgan,” Wanda said with a sleepy smile, leaning on her elbow. Morgan smiled brightly back and replied

“Good morning,” before fixing Steve and Bruce with another glare ( _ can _ five-year-olds even glare?) and wandering into the kitchen. Wanda stifled laughter against the back of her hand.

Bruce blinked.

“It’s uncanny,” he said, glancing over at Steve.

“It is.”

Steve’s eyes fell to the floor, specifically on a slip of paper that Bruce was sure he had put in his pocket. It must have fallen out when he was collecting bottles. He and Steve both lunged for it, but Steve beat him to it. He turned it over and looked it over.

“What’s this?”

“A list we came up with last night,” Bruce sighed, rubbing the back of his neck, “We must’ve drunk a little too much.”

“What is it?” Wanda asked, peering under Steve’s elbow.

Steve furrowed his brow.

“Some of these look plausible,” he said, looking to Bruce for confirmation.

“Look, I don’t know, but you heard what Clint said. You know I would do anything to get her back, but it might be too risky to meddle with. What if it has unforeseen consequences? What if we lose someone else? Or mess with the win we got,” Bruce said.

“What is it?!” Wanda asked again, standing up and looking over Steve’s shoulder.

“We could lose the battle, we could reverse the process, it could prevent any of our successes from happening-”

“Or we could get her back,” Steve said, handing Wanda the paper and facing Bruce. “You said you would do anything. We all would. There’s no harm in trying.”

“Did you just miss all of the possible harm that could be done by this?!” Bruce said incredulously. “She wouldn’t want anything to change, if there’s any reality where getting her back means we fail to save the world, you know she wouldn’t want it!”

“Bruce is right,” Wanda contributed.

“Thank you!”

“Look at this one,” Steve said, yanking the paper from Wanda’s grip and shoving it at Bruce.

_ Sacrifice something as a trade. _

“No. No, absolutely not.” Bruce shook his head. “There is no way we are giving anything else up.”

“You have a better idea?”

“ _ Yes _ ,” Bruce snapped without really meaning to. “We leave it alone!”

“Lower your voices, both of you,” Wanda hissed, nodding towards the kitchen. Her eyes flitted over the list a second time, and she shook her head, sighing deeply. “That we would think of meddling with death in the first place, it’s… ludicrous. Let’s say we did find a way to bring Nat back. Then what? How far do we take this? Does that mean we bring Tony back, too? What about Vis? And Pietro? Because  _ they  _ didn’t deserve to die, either.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and Bruce felt a sudden surge of guilt. Forcing Nat back when she might not even want to return was a selfish move. But being so absorbed with  _ wanting  _ her back, had he never stopped to consider other lives had been lost too? The thought was downright sickening. 

Bruce takes the list from Wanda, stares at it thoughtfully for a moment, and begins ripping it to pieces. Wanda looked away. Not even Steve tried to stop him. They were all silently thinking the same thing: Wanda was right. It was one thing bringing half the universe back. The choice to save trillions was nothing compared to the choice to save one. 

Bruce stood, lumbering into the kitchen and dropping the shredded remains of the list into the recycling bin. When he glanced over at little Morgan sitting at the kitchen table, she looked down quickly into her bowl of Froot Loops. 

“Do you know where your mom keeps the coffee?” He asked with a forced smile. She pointed wordlessly at the cupboard above the sink. “Thanks, kid.”

Bruce pulled three mugs from the cupboard and fumbled the scoop, tiny in his hands. After about five minutes of struggle he managed to push the correct buttons on the machine. He flashed a tired smile at Morgan before returning to the living room.

“We’re doing this, aren’t we,” said Bruce. He handed the mugs to Steve and Wanda, who wore the same resolute expression. They sat in total silence as they drank their coffee.

Finally, Steve set down his mug with a thud.

“I’ll find Clint,” he said darkly. “We leave in an hour.”

“Steve! How are we getting there?”

  
  


An hour later, Bruce, Wanda, Steve, and a very bitter Clint trudged up the ramp of a waiting quinjet, armed to the teeth and braced for the worst.

“Well I certainly hope you intend to face the Red Skull with more than those sorry attitudes,” Fury said. “Jesus, Barton, what happened to you?”

“You sure we’re allowed to borrow this?” Bruce said, looking up and down the ship. Being back in the quinjet was like greeting an old friend. One that he’d made some bad decisions with. He stopped himself from patting it.

“S.H.I.E.L.D.’s a bit occupied at the moment. Some good pilots got dusted too, a lot of ships have been turning up missing. It won’t be missed,” Fury assured him, “But- do try and bring it back in one piece.”

“Will do, Sir,” Clint said. He boarded the quinjet without waiting for the others. Bruce was still amazed they’d convinced him to join their expedition without any punches pulled, and in under thirty minutes. He figured Laura got more credit in influencing his decision than she’d admitted when Bruce had spoken to her, briefly, before departing the farm. Still, he was grateful. Having Clint with them eased his conscience more than he’d like to admit. It was just another factor counting towards how messed up this plan was in the first place.

Clint and Steve would pilot while Wanda and Bruce rode passenger. Bruce had decided, five years prior when they’d tracked down Thanos that space travel was unpleasant; and was reminded strongly of that fact as they glided out of the Earth’s atmosphere and shot off into hyperspeed. He tried to ignore his stomach lurching, and thought about how they were going to do this. A sacrifice needed to be made to get Natasha back. The way he saw it, one of them needing to die to fulfil that was inevitable. Not happening. 

After twenty minutes, Bruce decided that silence would get them nowhere.

“Clint.”

Clint grunted in response.

“When you were on Vormir, did Red Skull provide any details about what type of sacrifice needed to be made?”

“Whatever you love most,” Clint mumbled, staring intently at the floor.

There was a heavy pause as Bruce, as well as Steve and Wanda digested this fresh horror. Bruce knew Clint and Natasha loved each other, but this made Natasha’s sacrifice so much worse. And also begged an important question.

“So… what could Thanos have loved enough for that?” Wanda asked bitterly.

“His daughter, Gamora,” Steve said.

Bruce, Wanda, and Clint looked at him questioningly.

“Nebula told me.”

They fell into an uneasy silence for the rest of the trip. It was like bandaging a gunshot. Putting off the inevitable.

  
  


They filed off the jet. Bruce listened to the blood rushing in his ears. His heartbeat was too loud.

“You didn’t say it was so beautiful,” Steve said, pausing just outside.

It was true. A horrible, uncanny beauty, the landscape stretched on and on, the sky an aurora borealis of purple and soft pink. It seemed right that such terrible things happened here. No place in the galaxy had the right to feel this peaceful. No signs of life anywhere, just infinitely glittering silver sea.

The party trekked up the path, all too aware of every step, every shifting piece of gravel. Moving this place felt wrong. Again, he thanked himself for giving himself a stronger, more capable body. He expected something to come surging out of the sea, or for the nonexistent wind to slam him into the rock wall, fast and final. He flexed his shoulders and continued on.

Clint’s footsteps slowed to a stop behind him when a hooded figure came into sight near the end of the path. As Steve and Wanda continued Bruce halted as well, looking back over his shoulder. All the pent-up anger that Clint hadn’t bothered hiding all day had melted from his features. Instead, he gazed ahead like he’d been woken from a nightmare.

“You really think…” He swallowed. “You think this will work? When we leave this place, she’ll be with us?”

Bruce let the question sink in. He hadn’t dared to hope. To hope would be setting himself up to be crushed. But, he supposed this plan was built on hope. There was a chance Natasha wouldn’t be leaving with them at all. But there was also a chance she would.

  
“I think so,” he said. Clint set his jaw, and they made their way up the rest of the path to meet Steve, Wanda, and Redskull.


	3. the trade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce hadn't realized it would be this easy.

“Steven, son of Sarah, Robert, son of Rebecca, Clinton, son of Edith, Wanda, daughter of Erik.”

Bruce tensed. One chilling detail that Clint had failed to mention. As the Redskull announced them, each member of their party froze. Clint’s hand twitched toward his sidearm. Steve flexed his fingers.

A chill went up Bruce’s spine as Redskull turned around. The feather-light, tattered cloak he wore drifted above the ground and seemed to carry him up the cliff. He moved too smoothly, he floated. Bruce was about to point out that he looked just like a dementor before they reached the top.

The edge of the cliff taunted him. It called him, pulled him forward with invisible snaking tendrils, whispering in his ear. This was where Natasha died.

Clint seemed to be thinking the same thing. His hands curled into fists and he stared straight ahead.

Bruce couldn’t imagine what he was feeling. He was probably picturing the scene, and, as Bruce thought about it, he could picture it too. Red-blonde hair under the purple sky, explosive arrows sending up rocks and dust, and finally, a strong and determined Natasha running right off over the edge. He could see her plummet down. She was probably still down there, Bruce thought, his stomach lurching. If he got close enough to the edge he would see her broken body down there. He shuddered. His head hurt and his throat clogged. He blinked back tears.

Bruce noticed Wanda doing the same. She covered her mouth with her hand, looking up and blinking furiously.

Steve was the only one who looked unbothered. He stared determinedly forward, and Bruce knew what he was about to do before he did.

Bruce thrust one arm out in front of Steve just as he broke into a run.

“Don’t even try it, Captain.”

“Then what are we here for?” Steve replied, an edge to his tone.

And suddenly, as he stared ahead into the swirling pink and purple abyss, every dread, doubt, and question Bruce had about this mission became background noise. Maybe it was his own, maybe it was another entity entirely, but the one voice that rose above he understood and trusted like he’d never trusted anything before. Not even himself. Bruce found himself smiling, and Steve furrowed his brow in confusion.

Bruce looked over his shoulder to where Redskull loomed behind.

“Really?” he asked, tilting his head slightly. “Is that all?”  _ What you love most _ . Bruce hadn’t realized it would be this easy. He’d never considered what he loved most, even after Clint had explained the sacrifice. But now the voice was telling him, and it made perfect sense. It was something he had loved selfishly for only a short time, the one part of his life he didn’t regret. 

Redskull nodded, and that was all it took.

Bruce walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down. And there she was, her body mangled worse than he’d even imagined. Dried blood stained a crown beneath her head.  _ It’s okay.  _ They were going to get her back.  _ It’s okay.  _ The voice was hers.

There was a hand on his arm, and Bruce met Steve’s eyes once again. Steve opened his mouth but Bruce cut him off.

“Don’t worry, Cap,” he said resolutely. “This isn’t trading lives.”

_ The Hulk saved my life? Yeah, that’s a nice sentiment. Saved it for what? _

He jerked his arm out of Steve’s grip, and jumped.

He heard Clint shout, and Wanda scream, but they didn’t understand. He knew he wouldn’t hit the ground; that was all he knew, before everything faded to a familiar nothing.

Her eyes flew open. The first thing she registered was pain. Burning, cracking pain in the entire top half of her body. Then the purple sky swam, a galaxy to her returning vision, like coming up from underwater. And then a roar. A familiar one that made her heart sink with dread. Her head lolled to one side, and there he stood, massive chest heaving as he stared her down. His poignant green did not belong here. He stood out like a sore thumb amongst the purple scenery. And he was angry. And far too close. This was not the Hulk she knew, nor the one she had just met. This Hulk did not have Bruce Banner’s reticent eyes nor his hunch.

The next thing she registered about this Hulk was that he was going to kill her. Or try to. Again. She couldn’t  _ move _ . Her legs were numb, and every muscle screamed. Her fingers twitched. Her face screwed with effort as she shakily lifted a hand.

Fighting her first instinct to leap up and  _ run _ , she eked out a feeble “Hey big guy-”

The Hulk roared, kicking the ground like a bull.

“Bruce,” she gasped, slowly turning her hand palm-up. Fire shot through her arm, bringing tears to her eyes. “Sun’s getting real low-” she again looked up at the sky. The aurora blurred. It would be so easy to just close her eyes again… How was she awake?

The Hulk took off running. She expected the moment of impact, the  _ thud _ , and then nothing. It would be so much kinder should she fall back asleep.

Rather than hiding her face, as she had when she ran, pursued by the same monster years ago, she watched him come.

Perhaps there had been a time when she was afraid of death.

Instead, he stopped. So close that gravel blew into her face. His eyes, wild, locked on her own. Mesmerized. It took all of her energy to stare back. He blurred and focused. The Hulk crouched down, his eyes tracing her arm down to her upturned palm, and his large, rough fingertips brushed against hers. In a series of grunts, he staggered back a few feet and hit the ground hard. His tattered clothes grew large- or the monster wearing them shrunk, and he went still, his back turned to her.

Natasha’s head fell back, chest heaving. The effort it had taken to look up was unbearable. She heard footsteps, and voices that might have been familiar. They blurred, as the sky’s colors melted into each other, turning gray, and then black.

Only feet away, the remaining trio of Avengers stood in shock, the scene that had been eons for Natasha lasting mere seconds for them. Even after the dust of the Hulk’s outburst had settled, the air remained heavy.

Wanda’s eyes were wider than ever, and shone with tears. Clint was frozen, forgetting how to breathe, how to think.

Steve was the first to speak.

  
“Oh,  _ fuck _ .”


	4. failure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the first time in a long time he was lying to her.

Natasha woke achingly slowly. Blinding light overwhelmed her as she pried open her eyes. For a moment that peaceful silence welcomed her. Of course that interlude had been a fluke, she had nothing to fear. She was back in the endless white, floating…

But an I.V. beeped somewhere to her left. And her chest ached. And  _ faces _ swam above her head.

Of course it had been too good to be true, she sighed internally, letting out a small groan.

_ “Nat?” _

Her head fell to the side. A knee, and an elbow resting on it. Her eyes traveled the arm’s length and found a tanned hand. It squeezed. Bruce. Then there was a woman, slender, one hand over the other. Wanda. Steve leaned on the foot of the bed, and beside him, Clint, a woman’s hand curled around his arm. Pepper?

Natasha moved to push herself up and was greeted by cacophonous protest and burning  _ everything _ . She fell back with a gasp, blinded with pain. Her eyes screwed shut as she willed the pain to soothe.

“Lay back,” said Bruce to her left, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. The gesture sent pain shooting through her arm. Natasha cringed. Pain was an old enemy. One she had conquered many times. She had leapt down stairs with great gashes across her calves, been shot through the stomach, fired a rocket launcher after being shot in the chest, and completed missions with a broken nose. She had watched windows explode in her face, slashing her skin, she had been handcuffed to the bed every night for a decade, rubbing her wrist raw, she had enough scars to know exactly how vicious certain animals in the snow could be. Nothing had ever hurt like this.

When her vision finally cleared her eyes returned to Clint, but he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were on the floor, muscles tensed. He was intentionally avoiding her gaze- but for what? Last thing she remembered-

It hit her like a dull thud.  _ Let me go. It’s okay. _

The last thing she remembered was free falling.

“Why am I not dead?” Her voice was a croak. Pepper closed her eyes, but not before Nat saw how red they were. Wanda came to her side with a glass of water and helped her drink, but nobody answered her question. Clint still wouldn’t look at her, so her eyes found Bruce’s.

And he was human. Not the Hulk-human-hybrid he’d found happiness as, but the version of him she’d said goodbye to six years ago at the compound. It was strange, seeing him this small again. Not just physically. He took up less space. His confidence, inflated and satisfied for the first time in her recollection, had vanished.

“The stone,” she said hoarsely. “What happened?”

“Natasha…” Bruce trailed off. Natasha watched him grasping for words. Something was very wrong. Her stomach clenched. Did they lose? But no-

_ Wanda _ . Wanda was here. Natasha had been so absorbed with her thoughts and pain she’d barely registered the gentle expression of someone she hadn’t seen in five years. Her eyes snapped to Wanda, barely able to believe what she was seeing after spending so long convinced she was gone for good.

Wanda offered a tiny smile, blinking hard. “Hey Nat,” she greeted softly.

Natasha’s lips parted, not speaking for a long moment, daring herself to believe that this was real. But Wanda remained before her, living and breathing after she’d crumbled to dust. So Natasha dared. “We won.”

Letting go of Clint to come closer, Pepper nodded, tears glittering on her cheeks. “We did.”

“How?” Natasha asked, unable to shake the feeling that something had been lost.

There was a horrible silence.

Steve and Pepper locked eyes, holding an entire conversation in a second. Steve had that familiar wrinkle between his eyebrows, and Pepper gave a short nod.

“Tony didn’t-” Steve broke off, squeezing his fists and his eyes shut tight.

Venomous dread pooled in Natasha’s stomach.

Steve looked down. “Tony made a choice.”

Pepper was crying, her hands folded in front of her. It was anomalous, and raw. It made Natasha’s heart clench so hard she didn’t registered why until Pepper looked away, biting her lip.

Natasha’s head lowered back, slowly. Her head hurt; the familiar throb of withheld tears. She let them fall, sliding down her cheeks and wetting the pillow. She closed her eyes and just let them come.  _ Tony. _

He was supposed to save the world. He was supposed to drive Pepper up the wall and spend far too much money rebuilding the broken cities. He was supposed to take Morgan to Thanksgiving at Clint’s house, and argue with Steve. He was supposed to lay in the lab with Bruce and Natasha, speculating and joking just like they’d done together every year for a decade. Tony was supposed to live, and give the world what she couldn’t.

Why was  _ she _ here without him?

“He did, didn’t he,” Natasha murmured, the terrible smile that came with crying splitting her face. Her fist clenched in the sheet, twisting despite the horrible pain in her forearm. “Dumbass.”

Pepper had regained enough composure to speak. “I’m sorry you missed the funeral. If we’d known we were going to get you back, I’d have waited so you could have had a chance to say goodbye.”

_ If we’d known we were going to get you back _ . Blinking the last of the tears from her eyes, Natasha asked the question nobody had answered yet.

“What happened to me?”

Tension froze the room as the obviously dreaded question was touched upon.

Bruce leaned forward, silently volunteering to answer it. He rubbed the back of his neck before clasping his hands together and resting them on his lap.

“Nat,” he began tiredly. “This is going to be hard for you to hear, but-”

“The fall didn’t kill you.” Clint had finally spoken. He was studying Nat with a hard gaze that her exhausted mind, for once, couldn’t see past. The other three in the room had turned to look at him sharply, as if surprised. He continued in a tone as equally flat as his expression. “Your sacrifice didn’t work. We needed a plan B, which was where Bruce came in. His sacrifice succeeded in getting the stone. You were barely alive but we got you back in time for Cho to save you. You’ve been in a coma since, and we weren’t sure if you were ever going to come out of it.”

Pepper had gone pale. Wanda looked at Bruce, who was staring at Clint, who hadn’t removed his eyes from Natasha. She blinked, and slowly returned her gaze to Bruce, who still gaped at Clint.

“Your sacrifice?” She supposed that explained why he was human again, but not how he was alive. Her slow brain was having trouble making the pieces fit.

Bruce closed his mouth, swallowing. He slowly turned to her. “Yeah, uh… Turned out ‘whatever you love most’ wasn’t restricted to other people…” He looked back at Clint, and Natasha couldn’t see his expression, but he was clearly trying to get Clint’s attention. Clint had become very fascinated with the view outside the window. Wanda sat down slowly, her jaw set.

She sighed shakily. “You gave us a good scare, Nat.”

Natasha slowly pulled her arm out from under the sheet, inch by inch, until it rested palm-up beside Wanda. She closed her eyes and took a breath. It was exhausting having every motion  _ be  _ exhausting. So much new information spun through her head it hurt, and every muscle was on fire. She was so tired.

Wanda gave her hand a gentle squeeze before standing and touching Steve’s shoulder.

“We’ll give you some space,” she said, glancing at each of them in turn.

They filed out, each of them throwing Natasha a weak smile.

“Clint-” Natasha coughed.

He turned, his face shaky, but set.

“Stay.”

Clint obliged, retreating back in and sitting in the chair beside her with a creak.

“God, Nat-” he said in a pained voice, stopping and biting back tears. “Never do that again, okay?”

“Won’t be a problem. We won, huh.”

It was hard to imagine. Five years she spent hoping for a chance. One thread she could pull, one loophole she could exploit. One had presented itself. And she  _ failed _ .

“How did I fail?” she asked, her eyes drifting somewhere to Clint’s right. Her throat clogged arduously. They both knew the question wasn’t aimed only at her miraculous survival.

“You didn’t fail, Nat,” said Clint. But his words were empty and his eyes didn’t meet hers. For the first time in a long time he was lying to her. They’d never felt a need to trade falsehoods, or soften criticism. They knew each other well enough to see through any potential lie. His attempt was sad, and it hurt more than it helped.

“Laura and the kids?”

“They’re back,” he said, a tiny glint reappearing in his eye. “Safe and sound. So’s everyone else. It was one hell of a spectacle. You should’ve been there.”

Natasha offered a weak smile. If she had any right to she might’ve felt cheated. Instead she felt hollow. Whatever scrap of hope that had latched deep in her heart was being torn leisurely from its place.

Over twenty years she’d waited for an opportunity to do something right. To make the sacrifice play and save more people than she’d hurt. Even given the chance she’d been selfish. She tried to appease her guilt and she hadn’t even succeeded in that. She hurled herself off a cliff and somehow, bafflingly, survived. It was a sign, Natasha thought bitterly. There was no way to clean up her mess. No way out, no apology.

She wasn’t enough. Enough death on your hands and your life doesn’t matter enough to lose, she supposed.  _ A soul for a soul. _ If she lived, did that mean she didn’t have one? One worth trading for Clint’s, at least. She’d known since day one that Clint was a better person, a cleaner conscious, a purer soul than she was. It was no wonder her soul had not been a sufficient trade.

  
  


After an hour of sitting with Nat and recounting the return and the battle to her, Clint made his way downstairs so she could get some rest. With the compound gone, the best they had been able to do in terms of finding a place for Nat to recover was Tony and Pepper’s home. When they’d turned up out of the blue in a jet with a heavily injured, presumed-dead Nat in tow, Pepper skipped the questions and called Helen Cho immediately. Once stabilized, Nat had slept for two days and they’d had time to fill in Pepper. Her reaction was as expected: shaken, critical, but above all relieved they’d been able to salvage Nat’s life. She hadn’t asked once about the possibility of saving Tony’s, which Clint was grateful for, but wouldn’t forget about. They would cross that bridge when they came to it.

He entered the kitchen to find the rest gathered there, in a flurry of conversation and dinner preparations. Steve was leaning against the wall, conversing with Wanda in low tones. Bruce was aiding Pepper, pulling down plates from a cabinet. Morgan, seated on one of the barstools, was being chided by her mother.

“Young lady, for the last time, Natasha isn’t feeling well. Tomorrow maybe you can say hi, but tonight we don’t want to crowd her,” Pepper sighed as she sliced a loaf of bread.

“All of you got to see her,” Morgan pouted. “And you locked me outta her room, which was mean. She’s daddy’s friend which makes her my friend too.”

Clint’s heart tugged painfully at hearing the little girl talk about her father in present tense. Pepper must have caught it too because she fell silent, turning away to check the oven. Clint tapped Morgan’s shoulder and she twisted in her seat to face him.

“Hey kiddo, your mom’s right, Natasha’s sleeping right now so we should let her be. But before she went to sleep, she told me handmade get-well card would make her feel a million times better. If only we had a super-talented artist on hand…”

Morgan’s brown eyes went wide. “I can!” she exclaimed, clambering down from the stool. “I can make her the bestest card ever.” She scurried from the kitchen, and Clint chuckled. Pepper smiled softly, and followed her out with an exasperated-but-warm expression Clint recognized from Laura. 

“Did Nat really ask for a get-well card?” Bruce asked, leaning against the counter with a half-grin. Clint shrugged inconspicuously.

“Construction paper and glitter have the ability to lift anyone’s spirit.”

“Clint.” Steve pushed off the wall, walking to stand before him. “We need to talk about what happened in there.”

The mood shifted dramatically. Wanda looked up from the table, eyebrows knit together.

“What the hell, Clint,” she snapped. “Was this the plan?”

“You think the truth would be any better?” Clint scoffed, crossing his arms. “Look, I wasn’t expecting to lie either. But then I saw her lying there, and I remembered her on that- that  _ damned  _ cliff, and I just…” He sighed deeply, shaking his head and staring off at no point in particular. “You didn’t see her then. She was so… determined to die. Like her entire life had been leading up to the moment where she would sacrifice herself for the rest of us. And I know lying was wrong, but so was bringing her back against her will. She’ll take failure better than knowing her sacrifice was for nothing.”

“But her sacrifice wasn’t for nothing,” Steve said, furrowing his brow. “She got the stone and we won because of her. You think she’d be that angry that we brought her back?”

“Did you see her face when we told her about Tony?” Bruce said askance.

Clint was about to add when he noticed Bruce’s expression. It wasn’t the same undiluted focus as typically settled on his face when they discussed matters as a team, when his eyes fixated on the floor and he constantly pushed up his glasses as if he had to do so in order to be respected. Now, his arms folded and he leaned against a counter, confident in his assessment and sure that everyone else would listen to him. He looked more sure of himself among the team than Clint had ever seen.

“Since when do you know Nat so well?” he asked, genuinely curious, little hostility in his tone.

Bruce tensed. He glanced warily over at Clint, as if he had missed something obvious.

Steve and Wanda both shifted uncomfortably. So it seemed he was the only one missing a key fact. How did Wanda know something he didn’t about Bruce and Natasha?

Oh.

“Oh.” Clint rubbed the back of his neck, awkwardly looking for his next words. He supposed he never had asked Natasha if she’d pursued whatever spark Laura seemed to see between her and Banner. Hadn’t had time between the Ultron crisis and everything else that happened in the following months. He’d almost forgotten, to be perfectly honest. Could something true have happened that he hadn’t noticed? Whatever it was it must have made more of an impression than he thought.

The oven timer went off, startling Wanda, who stood right next to it; and Pepper came back in, Morgan in tow, saving him the embarrassment. Whatever she pulled out of the oven smelled fantastic, and mercifully halted their conversation.

Talk turned instead to Morgan’s card for Nat, lifting spirits all around.


	5. deep breath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe she should’ve tried harder to find him, reach out. Then again, he hadn’t tried either.

The next time Natasha woke, she was sure it was in heaven. Or wherever the dead went. For the pair of eyes which looked down at her were brown, and squarish, and knowing, framed by dark hair. Tony’s. She smiled. So she was right. It had been a brief interlude, a moment of peace and closure. They’d won, and Natasha was free to be safe in the plush whiteness.

But something was off, of course, something was off. The eyes that looked into hers were wide, and the hair which fell around it was long, and free of gray. These eyes smiled, and waited. They were not Tony’s, but eerily identical.

Natasha blinked, and the bleariness cleared away, revealing a little girl, straddling her, and watching as she woke. A girl with eyes that were just Tony’s, and a smile that was Pepper’s. Natasha smiled through the wave of fresh pain that came with the girl shifting off her, following her with her eyes.

“Aunt Nat?” the girl said shyly.

“Hi,” said Natasha. She slowly lifted a hand, gently cupping the girl’s cheek. “Morgan, right?”

She nodded.

Even the gesture was so like Tony. Down without an up, eyes reaching Natasha’s before her face did.

“I made you this.” Morgan shoved a piece of paper so close to her she couldn’t discern its contents. She could make out a red and yellow blur before Morgan lowered it again. She handed it to Natasha, and in careful red, yellow, and black crayon, Morgan had drawn  _ her _ , complete with a slopey half-smile and a string of circles in the shape of a braid faded from red to yellow over her shoulder.

It was quite possibly the most adorable damn thing Natasha had ever seen. A warm feeling spread in her chest. “You made this for me?”

Morgan nodded again, curling into herself. “Uncle Clint said it would make you feel better.”

Natasha smiled her first real smile in days. She tapped Morgan’s nose, causing the girl to giggle. “It does. Thank you.”

The door opened and Pepper entered in her pajamas, holding mugs of coffee. Her tired eyes narrowed on Morgan and Morgan’s eyes grew wide. If it didn’t hurt to laugh, Natasha would have.

Pepper set the mugs down on Natasha’s bedside table and placed her hands on her hips. “Morgan H. Stark, did you wake Aunt Natasha up after I told you not to?”

Morgan scrambled off the bed, making her grand escape into the hall.

Pepper sighed deeply, shaking her head. She picked up one of the mugs and handed it to Natasha. “Sorry about that. Don’t let the shy facade fool you, she’s as mischievous as she is stubborn. Like-”

“Like Tony.” Natasha held the mug to her chest and studied the crayon drawing on her lap fondly. “Don’t worry about it. I love her already.”

Pepper nodded. She sunk into the chair at Natasha’s bedside, but Natasha’s eyes followed Morgan down the hall.

“She was so excited to meet you, you know,” Pepper said, regarding Natasha softly. Her eyes were rimmed with red, either from tears or exhaustion. Judging by how closely she held that coffee mug (like a lifeline) it could’ve been either.

“Yeah? What’d you tell her about me?” Natasha quirked a smile, her eyes fallen to the sheets.

“All good things. A couple stories, mostly about how much you used to annoy me.” Pepper shook her head

For having been thirteen years ago, those days seemed eons in the past. Days when Natasha’s biggest concern had been monitoring Tony while fending off an obviously frustrated (and jealous) Pepper. Contrary to her initial belief that Tony would be her biggest problem, loose cannon that he was, Pepper had been an arguably worse one. Pepper had won her respect very early on, and the idea of humiliating or denying her was almost regrettable. Like she’d duped the rare someone who didn’t deserve it.

“That doesn’t sound like  _ all good things _ .”

“Well, Tony managed to make them funny,” Pepper said wistfully. Her gaze fell to the floor, and immediately darted back up to Natasha. Afraid. She was trying to make Natasha believe she was strong. Unmovable, just like she had when the idea of being beaten by Natasha was the worst thing in the world. Like Natasha was a succubus, a parasite. Another reporter to pretend to care about, appease, and dismiss. And just like that, Natasha was a reporter, a stranger again.

“He told me all about you too,” She said quickly. She couldn’t be alienated anymore. If she weren’t laying in Pepper’s guest room, back from the dead, broken in every way, she might’ve made a more dignified attempt. But five years alone was too much. She could not lose Pepper. For all her years with Tony, joking with him, saving the world with him, she had just as many with Pepper. Chiding Tony, reconciling. She knew the name of Pepper’s first pet, and her many trials dealing with Tony. And Pepper knew her just as well as any of the Avengers did.

“He called. Twice. Once when you found out you were expecting, and once when Morgan was born. I’ve never heard him sound so happy, Pepper, it was like-” Her eyes burned. She blinked up at the ceiling, willing back tears. “Like we saved the world all over again.”

“But we did, didn’t we?” Pepper asked. She smiled faintly, and closed her eyes, as though remembering a dream.

_ So this is grief _ , Natasha thought. It wasn’t like she was unfamiliar with the subject. Natasha had lost more people than she could count, and she had  _ felt _ their loss, for sure, but deep under the surface. Where no one could see her pain. Not like Pepper, who unashamedly grieved for her late husband. Not like Clint, who lost himself along with his family five years ago. Natasha, who lost half of the people she called family, and clung desperately to the next mission and the future of the Avengers, had never been able to grieve. Life didn’t stop for her like it did for Pepper and had done for Clint. There was always something else, some other need. Maybe the ability to slam the brakes had been taken from her, or maybe she’d just been born that way. Maybe that made her even less human than she thought.

There was a knock and Natasha and Pepper looked up to see Bruce standing in the doorframe. He looked sheepish.

“Sorry, I can come back-”

“No, you’re fine.” Pepper stood, brushing invisible wrinkles out of her pajama shirt. She smiled at Bruce. It was such a completely different expression from the one she had been wearing a moment ago that it could’ve been a mask, slipped on in the split second Natasha blinked.

Bruce stepped into the room, holding up his case of basic medical tools. “Check-up. I suppose you’re tired of seeing me at this point.” He inclined his head at Natasha with a small, polite smile. Since she’d woken up yesterday (and she assumed even before) Bruce had been coming in to take Natasha’s vitals and bring her medication and such, usually with Clint or Steve in tow.

“I don’t mind the company,” Natasha replied. It was true- she’d always hated being bedridden, or confined to one room. Laying in bed, unable to move much beyond holding up her head and her arms made her spine itch to escape (no matter how nice the accommodations were). Judging by the lack of change after a day, she could tell it would be a while before standing or even sitting up would be possible. 

“I need to go track down Morgan before she picks the lock to the garage,” Pepper said. “I’ll leave you two to it.”

After Pepper left, Bruce carried out Natasha’s check-up without speaking much beyond murmurs to himself as he scribbled down notes. Without Steve, Clint or Pepper around to keep a conversation going, the two were left working around a loaded silence.

“Deep breath,” Bruce instructed, placing the cool metal of the stethoscope a little below Nat’s collarbone. “It will hurt less to breathe once your ribs begin to heal,” he informed her afterward, setting the stethoscope aside. Natasha watched him, trying to detect a hint of melancholy, or discomfort, anything that inferred how he was feeling after his sacrifice. But he just went about his routine as usual, besides the occasional fumbling with tools that used to be too small in his hands. He was exactly the Bruce Banner she remembered from before he disappeared after Ultron, as if finding peace with the Hulk had never happened at all.

“Is this going to be a daily thing, doctor?” Natasha asked with a faint smile.

“As long as you’re immobile,” he said, echoing her smile. He tapped his pen on his knuckles, and wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Know what’s wrong with me yet?”

“More like what  _ isn’t _ wrong with you.” Bruce winced. “Pretty much everything that doesn’t play an instrumental part in keeping you alive is broken. All of your organs are fine, your brain function is normal, but everything else is… off.”

Natasha didn’t reply. She felt pathetic laying there, looking up at him with just her eyes like a child.

“What happened to you?”

“What happened to  _ me? _ ”

“It’s been a long time. You and the other guy seemed… whole.” What had it been like? She’d known him in his unified state for a total of maybe three days. He’d changed so much. He was happier, he looked safe in his own skin for the first time in her recollection. Come to think of it she couldn’t remember a single time before when he’d stood without hunching. When he hadn’t been fidgeting with his glasses, or sharply defending himself. He may as well have been dusted along with the others.

Bruce cleared his throat, setting the clipboard down on the foot of her bed.

“That’s what you gave up for the stone?”

He nodded.

“I guess that makes the other guy a person, huh? Makes you a regular Jekyll and Hyde.” A smile quirked her lip. “Tests his experiments on himself and gets an alter-ego out of it. You check all the boxes, Doc.”

It was out of her mouth before she thought about it.  _ Doc _ . It was so easy, so simple to fall right back into the old routine. Jokes that hung right on the edge. She blinked and he wore a suit jacket and leaned over a bar, smiling like they were anyone but who they were. First Pepper, now Bruce. Maybe she should’ve tried harder to find him, reach out. Then again, he hadn’t tried either.

“Was gonna send a postcard,” Bruce said, reading her mind, just as he had always been able to. It had been uncanny since the beginning. “Weren’t a lot of tourist stops on Sakaar. That’s where I… ended up, after Ultron - planet where all lost things go. Wizard behind the curtain there wasn’t any better than Oz’s.”

“You were on another planet?” Natasha jerked up, forgetting for a moment that she couldn’t move. She fell back with a grimace. “How’d you get back?”

“Thor. He found me, got lost in the bifrost I think he said. Found me in a gladiator arena.” He furrowed his brow. “The Grandmaster had me fighting there for two years.”

And just as he could read her, she knew him and all his pages. He wore the same expression he had after Africa.

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“I know.”

That was new. Another page she hadn’t read. She never thought two words would change all she knew about a person, but Bruce Banner was full of surprises.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “For leaving.”

“I think we both got carried away.”

_ So we just disappear?  _

“Do you want to talk about…” he trailed off but she could finish the sentence for herself.

_ I adore you. _

It was all so long ago. Natasha shook her head, barely. “Not anymore.”

For the split second his expression shifted, Natasha saw his reaction to her words. Relief? Hurt? Regret? All three, perhaps; it was difficult to make out. For whatever reason, the idea settled like a stone into the pit of her stomach.

Bruce clicked his pen, and tucked his clipboard under his arm, back in doctor-mode. “Get some rest. I’ll be back-“

“In the evening,” Natasha finished for him. “I know the drill, Doc.”

“What a responsible patient. Too bad I don’t have any lollipops.” That easy, insecure smile was back.

“You could always raid Morgan’s stash,” Natasha suggested, the corners of her mouth twitching up.

“Not risking it.” Bruce shook his head, pausing before the door. “Between you and me, she scares me a little.”

“Remind you of anyone?” Natasha heard herself asking. 

“I was never scared of you, Natasha.” He left his words hanging in the air as he exited the room. 

And Natasha noticed, as Bruce crossed under the doorway, he ducked his head. As though he were too large for the doorframe. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all, it's Mundie (let_me_read_you_a_romance). Sorry for the... month? of intermission. School just started for both of us and it's insane, hopefully future updates will be sooner!
> 
> Hi our lovely readers the other author (i need a cool nickname too)/be_the_good_guys here, sorry for making you wait for this mostly-filler chapter, i promise we'll make up for it soon with the chapters to come. stay tuned for the angst train coming your way, thanks again for reading *blows infinite kisses* now go do that homework you're procrastinating to read fanfic while i go do the homework i've been procrastinating to write fanfic love you all until next time byee


	6. louder and louder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce felt nothing besides a squeeze, lost to the warmth. Is this what healing felt like?

A week at the lake house and Bruce was beginning to feel like he was overstaying his welcome. Steve came every couple days to check up on Natasha, but he and Rhodey had their work cut out for them reconstructing the compound and sorting things out post-Thanos. Clint had gone home to his family but called frequently. Even Wanda had gone with Steve to help rebuild her home, while Bruce stayed at the lake house to oversee Natasha’s recovery. That’s what he told himself, at least.

Because Bruce had a home to return to. A spacious apartment in California he’d lived in for the majority of five years, with a lab and a nice view and tall windows that let in a lot of light in the morning, decorated modestly with the largest furniture and appliances he could find. He imagined going back now would be like breaking into a giant’s house.

Picturing that apartment, just like remembering anything pre-Vormir, was like trying to remember a dream. There were fragments, some sharper than others: transforming into the Hulk and realizing his mind was still  _ his _ , those few days leading up to the final battle. Other memories were dull and out of reach. The pure bliss he’d associated with that period of peace was gone, reopening a gaping hole in his chest. Only this time it was worse, because he knew what happiness felt like. So no, he couldn’t go home. Not to an apartment and a life that was never truly his.

Natasha’s recovery was proving to be as complicated as he’d predicted. She was still bedridden and bored, though she could sit up now for a few minutes at a time. F.R.I.D.A.Y’s body scans showed that she was healing, at least, though Bruce wished he could do more. Not just because the work kept him busy, he hated seeing her like this.

She had yet to lose her cool, however, which Bruce endlessly admired. He didn’t think it was possible, but he was still finding things out about her that amazed him. He’d seen her grimace, flinch, wriggle, and wince as he dabbed antiseptic on abrasions and pried shrapnel out of her skin. They’d probably spent more time in the lab than outside it, her being the most vulnerable member of the team. He’d seen her with emotional scars ripped open and watched her heart split in two. Bruce knew what her pain looked like - and this had to be the worst pain imaginable. Every single piece of her body was broken. He always came bearing bad news, yet she still smiled when she saw him.

Bruce always dreaded this part of the checkup. Leaning close enough to apply a stethoscope, Bruce could feel her every movement, every hitch of her breath. He felt it now, shallow, but steady against his fingers. It made his skin tingle and itch. He shoved it down.  _ Way past that, Banner, _ he chided himself. He hated these resurgences. They felt old, the quickening of his heart feeling out of place, from another time that may as well not have happened. He surely didn’t deserve it after how he’d reacted the first time around. He had no right to these feelings now. Perhaps, he thought with a wry smile, it was punishment.

“You know, you’re gonna have to make eye contact with me eventually,” said Natasha. And then her hand was on his, gently removing the stethoscope and looking up at him. There was no expectation in her gaze, but a deep sadness. It looked at home on her face in a way that broke his heart.

“I should’ve visited,” he said, fingers toying with the rubber stethoscope. Feedback scratched in his ear.  _ Seven phd’s Banner, seven.  _ Bruce winced, and removed the headphones.

A flickering smile was her only response. It would’ve been better if she’d yelled.

“How do you do that, Nat?” he asked, pressing a hand to his forehead as if it could stave off the incoming headache. He looked up, and finally locked eyes with her. Mild surprise combined with aching sadness met his gaze. She could’ve been an entirely different person for what he saw there.

As Bruce knew her, her expressions hardly reached her eyes, contrasting with her smile, mismatching and fitting together like puzzle pieces. Part of what made her so fascinating was actually what he used to hate about her: that she was always telling three different stories: one with her eyes, one with her lips, and one with her words.

Now they all told the same story in a unified tiredness. She was exhausted and wasn’t even hiding it.

She blinked, and what he saw was gone. Or maybe it wasn’t; she averted her gaze. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Bruce,” she said, her voice a touch huskier than usual.

But what did he know?

In between Natasha’s checkups, Bruce tended to wander. It had been a week and a half since bringing Natasha back, and nearly four since Tony’s death. The world, as far as he knew, was far from falling back into place after what people were calling the “Blip” (upon sharing this bit of information with Natasha they had both fallen into delirious fits of laughter, though neither was quite sure why they found the title so funny). Pepper returned to work, steering Stark Industries through the storm, moving forward while Bruce stood still. He told himself he didn’t mind, and when he remembered it was all for Nat, it got easier to believe.

It was hearing Pepper’s muffled sobs down the hall every few nights, when she thought no one else was awake that got him thinking. So now he wondered while he wandered, mentally running figures and logistics while his legs took on a mind of their own. He barely paid attention to where he went anymore as the  _ what if’s  _ grew louder and louder. He took care of Nat and helped Pepper where he could, but, through it all, he couldn’t stop thinking about time travel.

Wanda was right. You bring one person back from the dead, and you can’t stop hearing the voices of the others you left behind. And when Pepper was crying at night and Bruce could do nothing, Tony’s voice was always the loudest.

The raw potential that time travel held was almost too much for him. With this power they could (for a different timeline, anyway) prevent the Holocaust, stop the dropping of the atomic bomb, warn New York about 9/11 - the possibilities were endless. So, after allowing himself a night of these thoughts, Bruce returned to reality. With time travel there was a chance to bring people they’d lost into the present, but it would mean stealing those people from that timeline. To heal their own wounds they would be causing a different variant of themselves immense pain. Moral philosophy was complicated enough debating whether one’s own happiness or that of others was more important, but throwing in whether yours or a  _ different version of you’s  _ was threw Bruce for a loop. Was it ethical to hurt a different version of Wanda to make this one happier? Literally how would he even decide which version of Wanda was more deserving if they were the same person? He had to cut himself off much earlier debating that one. There was a serious reason why none of his PhD’s were in moral philosophy.

  
  


“How would you even  _ make _ that call?” he said, raking a hand through his hair, avoiding the gaze of a very puzzled Natasha. He’d sat trying to explain his thought process to her for the past hour, and had so far only further confounded himself.

“You don’t,” Natasha said, after a brief silence.

“Hm?”

“You can’t make that call, so don’t,” she said with a shrug. It was more of an awkward lift of the shoulder. Bruce had had to become an expert in reading microexpressions in the past two weeks.

“What do you mean  _ don’t _ ?” he asked, taking off his glasses. He neatly folded them and placed them in his shirt pocket, making a mental note to remember they were there.

Natasha’s eyes flicked to them as well, making the same note. She winced as she tried and failed to lean forward. She took in a customary breath before continuing. Such a simple gesture should not make him so sad.

“I guess something I learned, something Clint had to teach me, was that dwelling on impossible choices doesn’t do any good. If you can’t make a decision, don’t.” Her smiles were few and far between, but quoting Clint brought one out.

“So we should just leave them? Even though we have the means to bring them back?”

“You said it yourself. We wouldn’t be bringing them  _ back _ at all,” Natasha reminded him, “This isn’t their timeline. They wouldn’t be themselves as they are- were in ours.”

“Maybe not.” Bruce scratched the back of his neck and met her gaze. “But is it not worth a try?”

“I think  _ you’re _ in the wrong timeline,” Natasha chuckled. “I thought you were the responsible one.”

“Well, I’m without my negative influence,” Bruce said. A silence hovered over the both of them. The consistent one that hadn’t gone away for… five years? Two weeks in this house thinking about time travel and time had lost all meaning to him. Eight could have past and he’d have been none the wiser. He found though, when he was with Natasha, puzzling over nothing in particular, it was a bit easier to contend with. Natasha’s presence was accompanied by a sense of supportive camaraderie, a sympathy only she could provide, for she could relate to most things. Romanoff miracle number fifty thousand: ability to sympathize with anything despite lack of experience in the area. Natasha just got things that he would never understand. She’d  _ said _ it was the same talking to him, but how in the world could that be true?

He made the sudden decision to speak and break the tension, because that’s what they did, wasn’t it? Dance around each other until they were both breathless. Clearing his throat, he fumbled with his medical case. “F.R.I.D.A.Y, run a body scan of Natasha.”

“You did that when you came in, Doc,” Natasha reminded him, the corner of her mouth twitching up again. Dammit.

“Ms. Romanoff is correct,” came F.R.I.D.A.Y’s incorporeal voice. “Would you like to run another-”

“No, thanks Fri, we’re good,” Bruce answered apologetically, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I think I’m losing it.”

“I’m not surprised,” F.R.I.D.A.Y replied with a hint of cheek that only Tony’s A.I.s have. “You haven’t slept in over thirty hours-”   


“Thanks, Fri!” Bruce cut her off loudly, heat rushing to his cheeks. Natasha was studying him with a vaguely curious expression.

“Thirty hours, huh?” She asked quietly. “You working extra jobs I don’t know about?”

“Believe it or not, strip clubs pay better than the medical field,” he replied without thinking. As he opened his mouth to apologize, slightly mortified, Natasha laughed. A real, full laugh that he’d never heard from her before.

“I’ll be damned,” she said, shaking her head. “An innuendo from Bruce Banner? Your ‘negative influence’ must be hanging around.”

Her reaction settled in, blanketing his chest in warmth that spread through him and pulled his mouth into a grin before he even realized it. “Yeah, yeah. Tony’s rolling in his grave.”

For the first time, the mood didn’t dissipate at the mention of Tony. Bruce felt nothing besides a squeeze, lost to the warmth. Is this what healing felt like?

A soft knock on the door. Pepper leaned on the doorframe, looking frazzled in a suit jacket and pencil skirt. She opened her mouth to say something only to close it again upon examining the room, and ask, “Am I interrupting?”

“Not at all,” Natasha replied, turning her smile from Bruce to Pepper (he might be delusional, but Bruce could have sworn he saw her expression shift gears; the same exact smile, eyes for a different person).

Pepper nodded, biting her lip. “I hate to spring this on you two, but I just got called in for an emergency board meeting and can’t get a hold of a babysitter for Morgan. Do you think you could-”

“Pepper,” Bruce interjected gently. “Don’t worry about it. Go to your meeting.”

Pepper looked beyond relieved. “I can’t thank you enough. You know Morgan by now, she’s independent and is fine with playing alone. She’s working on her robots right now so that will keep her entertained for a while, all you need to do is check up on her and feed her lunch and dinner. You can order in or we have leftovers in the fridge. And keep her out of mischief, of course, Fri will notify you if she tries getting into the garage.” Pepper relayed all this information in one breath.

Natasha returned her gaze to Bruce. “Noted. She’s in good hands.”

Bruce’s face heated and he hoped she couldn’t tell.

Pepper thanked them thrice more before hurrying out to the car.

Shortly after, Bruce left Natasha, navigating to the downstairs kitchen, following the sound of loud and familiar music. He found Morgan kneeling in a seat at the kitchen table, bent over a metal contraption, twisting a screwdriver into its center that could have been a knife in comparison to her tiny hands. She was intently focused, and didn’t glance up when Bruce entered, though she greeted him with a flat “hi”.

“Hey,” he replied, shaking off the deja vu. When Pepper had said Morgan was “working on her robots” he had expected that to mean playing with robot toys, but at this point he wasn’t surprised. “Uh… Do you need anything?”  _ Seven phds and you can’t handle an interaction with a five year old. Way to go. _

“No thanks.” Morgan set the screwdriver down and beamed up at him, switching from Tony 2.0 to the picture of sweetness so fast she had to be taking lessons from Nat. “I’m all good.”

“Got it,” he said, swinging his arms and pretending to glance around the room. Part of him felt Morgan’s eyes burning through his skin and desperately wanted to leave her to it, but the part that reminded him Nat would never let him hear the end of being intimidated by a kindergartener kept him in place.

Morgan watched him, tilting her head. “Want me to turn the music down? Mommy doesn’t like it loud either when she’s home, but I can…”

“It’s fine, kid,” he told her, registering the music for the first time and found himself grinning. “AC/DC?”

Morgan bobbed her head up and down. “Daddy says it makes you focus and work better.”

“Does it?” Bruce asked, nearing the table and eyeing the first-place-high-school-science-fair-winner she was assembling from scrap.

“Yep,” Morgan chirps. She smiles again. “I like it.”

Bruce tugged lightly on her ponytail. “Me too, kid.”

Morgan allowed Bruce to keep her company while she worked, discussing everything from the (in Morgan’s words) “little asshole” boy in her kindergarten class to AI science. Her ability to converse at her age amazed Bruce; if it wasn’t for her squeaky voice and lisp he may as well have been talking to an adult. Though, once again, he wasn’t surprised; she was Tony and Pepper’s daughter, after all. The warmth in his chest from earlier just kept expanding.

Around lunchtime, as Bruce stood in front of the fridge to scope out Pepper’s leftovers, the music cut.

Morgan looked up, brown eyes perplexed. “Why’d ya stop, Fri?”

No less than a second after, the house filled with an overwhelmingly loud, one-note tone. Bruce didn’t need FRIDAY to explain what it meant, but she did. “Doctor Banner, Ms. Romanoff is flatlining.”

_ “What?!” _

Bruce stumbled away from the fridge, nearly tripping over the door corner in his haste. The moment of peace shattered, terror filled the room.

“Mr. Bruce?” came Morgan’s little voice, blurred and distorted.

He ran for the stairs, grabbing the railing for speed until he fell against the wall, fingers grasping at his chest.  _ No. _

His heart pounded painfully fast, familiar, and horrible, and, as he felt the blood pumping, undiluted horror turned the room red. And then green.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all, it's Mundie, just wanted to say that we read all your replies. We actually send them to each other when we get them, they make us really happy :) so thank you!
> 
> What M said <3 as one might expect, the next chapter is a wild one. Stay tuned! -S


	7. all fall down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Will he hurt you?”
> 
> “Not me.”

_ Shit-  _ Natasha frowned, twitching a finger toward a cable. The little black wire that connected her to the heart monitor fell out, and dipped to the floor. Slowly maneuvering through the pain, she bent awkwardly to the side, trying to snag the wire in the crook of her finger. It bobbed out of her reach. She relaxed against the pillow, easing her arm back onto the bed as her shoulder screamed.

Finally settled, she closed her eyes before making a second attempt- and, out of F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s speakers, blared an ear-shattering, single-tone noise. A flatline. She cursed again, rolling her eyes.

_ “What!”  _ came a voice from downstairs.  _ Bruce.  _ Something hit the wall, wood creaking. The flatline continued to scream into silence. And then, a terrible roar.

Her heart sank like a stone.  _ No. _

Wood splintered with the crunch of a giant fist. A little girl screamed.

The Hulk had erupted right into the Stark house. And Morgan was right downstairs with him.

A surge of pure, unadulterated fear tore through Natasha. She couldn’t  _ move. _ Somewhere deep inside, metal screeched and sparks of electricity burst from pipes, shorter hair obscuring her path as the same monster tore through a tiny hallway. And then she was sitting up, every muscle and every bone on fire. She still couldn’t move her legs, but her arms, fully functional with a surge of adrenaline, drew her forward. She threw the blanket from her legs, shifting upside-down, gripping the edge of the bed and yanking herself across. She fell to the floor, shoulders first, then the rest followed. Reaching one shaking hand out, Natasha gripped the floorboard, digging in with her nails. Slowly, agonizingly, she pulled herself forward.

The Hulk roared again, and Natasha caught a flash of an image. A terrified girl facing a beast ten times her size, his shadow cast over her face.

She drew her left hand, grimacing, tears building. Like the world’s least-capable mountain climber, Natasha pulled herself forward, legs limp behind her until she reached the hallway. The stairs were so close. One more pull and she could crawl down.

“Bruce!” she screamed, yanking herself toward the stairs. “Bruce I’m up here!” The stairs swam in her vision.

She took a deep, shaky breath, closed her eyes, and pulled herself over.

Her head hit the wall with a crack. Dull ache momentarily blinded her, stars sparkling in her eyes. She blinked, and the scene came into focus.

Two sets of eyes fixed on her: one wide and trembling, the other far too close. Just to her side, so near her toe touched his shin, the Hulk reared. Animal eyes bored into hers, and her heart slammed, as if trying to escape.  _ Spark!  _ She blinked again, hard.  _ A beam. Metal was falling all around her, the beast in pursuit roared.  _ She didn’t register her hands lifting to her face until they covered her ears, pitifully twisted, half propped on stairs half leaning against the wall. She could feel him twitch. The simple touch sent hot pain up her spine.

“Aunty Nat!”

_ Morgan. _

Natasha opened her eyes. She looked right into the Hulk’s face, empty of Bruce, just like on Vormir.

“Hey big guy-” she slowly pried a hand from her head, reaching it out stil excruciating. “S-sun’s getting real-”

He charged, and she was on Vormir again, thinking it was over; she  _ knew  _ it was over this time because the Hulk wasn’t stopping. He was in too deep, too riled up. Time slowed. She could hear her own shallow gasps, hear her thundering heart louder than even the Hulk’s footfalls, and a buzzing. As though the Hulk’s rage, his energy, affected every molecule in the room; everything was shaking. He was so close now, she could feel his heat, and the monster that was and wasn’t her friend obstructed her vision so completely the rest of the room, the world fell away; and Natasha’s last thought would be that Bruce would wake up to this and never come back from it.

He rose above her, reaching his arms above his head.

She refused to close her eyes.

His hands curled into fists.

She would watch the death blow when it came crashing down.

When Natasha  _ adored _ Bruce, she made a promise he would never hear. She didn’t blame him then and she wouldn’t blame him now- but if he killed her he would never know it.

Morgan screamed. Natasha rolled so hard her body left the ground. The Hulk’s fists hit the hardwood floor where her head had been a millisecond prior, and he tumbled after them headfirst into the house’s lower level when the floor caved in on the impact.

Time sped up again with a burst of adrenaline, and Natasha scrambled away from the edge of the hole in the floor, pushing herself up against the wall. Her eyes landed on Morgan, pressed against the opposite wall, every inch of her little body trembling. Her hands were pressed over her eyes, but she appeared unharmed, and Natasha found it a bit easier to breathe upon seeing so.

She could hear him stumbling around downstairs, likely dazed. They didn’t have much time.

“Morgan,” she rasped. She could hardly hear herself, but Morgan reacted, shaking her head and whimpering. Natasha’s heart throbbed. “Sweetheart, it’s okay, you need to look at me.”

Slowly, Morgan uncovered her eyes. Her cheeks were wet and blotchy in stark contrast to the rest of her pale face.

Natasha clutched her side, sucking in another painful gasp. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” she breathed on the exhale. “Your dad… Did your dad ever tell you about any security systems he had in this house?” she asked. Tony, even in retirement would have some thirty Marks installed to protect his family, she knew without a doubt.

Morgan nodded.

Natasha nodded as well. “Where?”

“My room,” Morgan responded, in a voice that trembled to match her body. “There’s a button in my- my special hiding spot.” She raised an arm, pointing over the cavernous hole in the floor between them, past Natasha and down the hall. 

The cacophony of the Hulk thrashing around downstairs became increasingly frequent as he began to snap out of it. It would be no time before he found them again soon- they needed to act.

“Okay.” Natasha swallowed hard, and she hated herself for her next words. “Morgan, I- I’m hurt. I won’t make it to your room. You’re going to need to press the security button.”

Morgan’s eyes grew wide, stuck on the gaping stretch of no-floor between them, through which there was a flash of green. On one side, there was a ledge of remaining floor, barely three-inches wide.

“You see the ledge…” Natasha gasped, scooting closer to the hole. “On the side? You need to get along it to get across. Back to the wall. I’m right here.” She reached an aching arm towards Morgan. “If anything happens, I’ll catch you.” She would, or she would die trying.

Morgan neared the hole. From this distance, Natasha could see she’d stopped crying, but tear tracks still shone on her soft cheeks. She pressed her back to the wall at the start of the ledge, but didn’t move.

“It’s okay,” Natasha promised, for a third time. “Don’t look down. Don’t be afraid.”

Morgan’s gaze locked on the opposite wall. “I’m not afraid,” she whispered, and took a tiny step. And then another. “M’not afraid…” Four more side steps, and she was three-fourths of the way there. With her arm outstretched, Natasha could almost touch her.

“You’re doing so well, just keep going-”

Just as Morgan took another step, Hulk roared, and the entire Earth shook when he threw something heavy downstairs. The movement lurched Morgan’s small figure forward.

“ _ No!” _ Natasha threw both her arms out, and her fingers closed around a fistful of pink hoodie. She yanked her weight back, holding Morgan over the edge without the strength to lift her. Morgan wriggled until her dangling legs were on solid ground with the rest of her body. Without thinking, Natasha gathered her in her arms, unable to release her grip on the back of Morgan’s hoodie. Any more sudden moves and her shoulders might actually break in two.

She heard muffled, hiccupy-sobs against her shoulder, and allowed her eyes to close.

“It’s okay, brave girl. I’ve got you.”

She pulled back, and Morgan got to her feet with determination. “The button.”

Natasha nodded, brushing stray hair out of Morgan’s face. “You got it.”

The Earth shook again, and Morgan’s eyes shot to the hole.

“Hey.” Natasha said, recapturing the little girl’s attention. “Don’t worry about him. I’ll keep him distracted, but sweetie, you need to go.”

“Will he hurt you?” Morgan’s eyes were filled with concern, and for the first time, Natasha was stricken with how much she looked like Pepper.

Natasha gave her the most reassuring smile she could manage. “Not me.”

When Morgan had turned to run down the hall to the door marked with the star stickers, Natasha heard the unmistakable creak (more like groan) of the stairs under the Hulk’s weight. Her heart dropped into her stomach. She dragged herself to the edge of the hole in the floor, thinking her body might finally give out,her muscles screaming. Adrenaline worn thin, pain seeped through every pore.

The large sofa, behind the upturned wreck of the coffee table, was positioned right beneath her. She needed to distract the Hulk, keep him downstairs; there was no question, even if it was a risk. She used her last ounce of strength to swing her legs over the edge of the hole, and push herself forward-

The Hulk caught her in midair. 

She had no time to feel the rush of fear before he swung her down like a ragdoll, knocking the wind out of her lungs.

Pressure built in her throat but there was no room to cough. She felt her newly healing ribs crack and burn as he swung her up to eye-level.

He spun and swirled in her vision, blurring and distorting.

The Hulk leveled her with a gaze more curious than angry. A flicker of Bruce, she registered, and a light illuminated in her chest.

“H-hey Bruce-” Natasha tried to smile, and instead coughed up something thick. When she blinked again the Hulk’s face was spattered with red. “It’s me. You need t-”

Hulk shook his head, and her with it.

Her stomach churned. She couldn’t open her eyes anymore lest she throw up right on his giant green fingers. A warning.

“Sun’s getting real l-”

Hulk roared, blowing her hair back with the force of it. A pounding in her ears joined her stomach, and her muscles. A last warning.

“Low-”

Gravity malfunctioned. Nothing weighed her down and no hand crushed her ribs. Instead she was flying, free, and then she went through something, hard, something that shattered around her, but she was still flying. She hit something, harder, and she wasn’t flying anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, it's Mundie! Bee and I have been absolutely ((get out of my) -Bee) SWAMPED at school, so sorry for the delay! As the end of the semester approaches there's a good chance we'll be posting again a little sooner. All my love! - Mundie
> 
> WHAT SHE SAID also we've decided my nickname is Bee now. - Bee


	8. splattered with red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The only clear thought she could muster echoed itself like a mantra in her head, possibly out loud, for the lines blurred: Please let her be okay.

F.R.I.D.A.Y had contacted Pepper and S.H.I.E.L.D simultaneously. Pepper couldn’t remember much of what happened between her phone pinging with the alert in the middle of her press meeting and flying through the air in Rescue (because driving wouldn’t be fast enough; even shooting through the traffic-less sky wasn’t fast enough). The only clear thought she could muster echoed itself like a mantra in her head, possibly out loud, for the lines blurred: Please let her be okay.

She touched down in the middle of a circle of S.H.I.E.L.D vans, tripping forward as the suit retracted. Multiple agents started toward her, and she brushed them away. She saw neither them nor that a third of her house was caved in; the only thing that mattered was emerging from the crowd holding Maria Hill’s hand, reaching for her and snapping everything into focus.

Pepper gathered Morgan in her arms, holding her tight, stroking her hair. Everything in her was pulled taut, a beat away from unraveling; a feeling all-too familiar that she never anticipated feeling over her daughter- not yet, at least. The tidal wave of relief sweeping over her wasn’t new either.

Maria’s smile was warm, but tight. Her now-free arms were crossed. “She’s okay,” the agent confirmed. “Made it out with nothing worse than a few scrapes. She was brave.”

“That’s my girl,” Pepper breathed shakily. 

Morgan pulled back, happily showing Pepper the Hello-Kitty bandaids on her elbows. “Look.”

Pepper couldn’t help a small smile of her own. “Good to know S.H.I.E.L.D is well stocked in kitty bandaids,” she noted, looking up at Maria.

“We use them on all our agents. Fury’s request,” Maria replied.

Pepper buried her face in Morgan’s hair, inhaling the scent of dust and strawberry shampoo.

“Natasha was med-evaced to a S.H.I.E.L.D facility a few minutes before you got here,” Maria continued grimly. “Barton went with her. She was… It’s bad, Pepper. She was barely out of the woods before the Hulk got through with her.”

“God,” Pepper whispered, her eyes squeezing shut. “What happened?”

“Auntie Nat saved me,” Morgan piped up, turning her head on Pepper’s shoulder. “She’s a superhero, Mommy. Like you said.”

Maria nodded. “We found Little Miss here in a closet in her room. She triggered a security system installed in the house that targeted and locked down the threat with nanotech. Pretty advanced stuff.” Her tone took on a hint of fondness. “Tony?”

Morgan blinked sleepily, a warm, comfortable weight in Pepper’s arms. Their baby. Tony’s still protecting her.

Pepper nodded, blinking hard. When she trusted herself to speak again, she asked, “Bruce?”

“Back to being Bruce. We found him unconscious, still locked up tight. Nat…” Maria shook her head. “I don’t know how the hell it was possible in the state she was in, but she must have been distracting him from Morgan. Hulk threw her out a window.”

Pepper’s heart sank like a stone.

“Is she going to be okay?” Pepper asked, shaking off an image of Natalie Rushman. Natasha would never stop protecting their family, and had died once - and she prayed to God not twice - to prove it.

Maria glanced down, and even Pepper didn’t miss her vice-grip on her bicep. “We don’t know yet. Cho’s never failed before, but there’s only so many times a person can be brought back from the dead. Speaking of-” Maria’s eyes shot back up, “You told her yet?”

Right, Pepper thought, that. The lie had held for three weeks so far, limited interaction surely being responsible. Bruce being her limited interaction though, Pepper was not sure how it did. His track record was not the best with dishonesty, at least upon direct confrontation, and Natasha had confronted them about it. Pepper almost told her outright several times. That horrible look on her face was paralyzing. Concession was simply not a Natasha Romanoff emotion; she never forgot and she never gave up. All the new feelings she saw on Natasha recently were overwhelming. It was like a dam breaking, a dam blocking feelings Pepper hadn’t even realized had been missing. She was finding out only now that she had never seen Natasha heartbroken, disparaged, crying, or - on a somehow sadder note - happy. She had yet to see that last one. How Natasha had held it in so long was beyond her.

“Not yet,” Pepper sighed, “How would we? Bruce can barely contain himself. He tries to see her as little as possible, but it’s wearing on both of them. It’s pretty obvious.”

“Obvious isn’t a word usually used to describe Natasha.” Maria said wryly.

“Either of them, really,” Pepper agreed.

An agent came up behind Maria, tapping her shoulder. He shot a questioning glance at Pepper, which Maria dismissed with a nod.

“Romanoff is unstable,” he said, “Dr. Cho says she might not last the hour. If you want to say goodbye, now is the time.”

Pepper’s heart, which had already sunk so low it was pressuring her insides, leapt up into her throat so harshly it hurt.

Maria looked skyward, blinking hard. She took a deep breath and exhaled.

“Get Banner?” she said, her voice a notch higher than usual.

Pepper nodded. She knelt down beside Morgan, taking a deep breath of her own. How could she ever explain this? In what universe should she have to?

“Sweetie, see that ship?” She turned and pointed to the carrier Maria was already heading for.

Morgan nodded.

“Follow Maria, okay?”

“What about you, Mommy?”

“I’ll catch up in just a moment, I’m gonna go get Uncle Bruce and I’ll be right there.” Pepper stood and pressed a kiss to Morgan’s hair.

Morgan smiled and followed Maria to the carrier.

Pepper followed her progress until she disappeared up the ramp, and turned her attention instead to her wrecked house.

The northward window was shattered, and it showed not the living room, but a slate of the same shining metal that coated the rest of the house. Part of the second floor had caved in, giving the house the look of a pewter witch’s house one might find in an antique shop. The couch, cleanly halved by the barrier, lay on its side (or half of it did) in the grass. Powdered glass shimmered innocently on the ground, ominous as her eyes drifted up and found the splatter of red on the closest tree. She shuddered.

“Hey,” Pepper said, trying to get the nearest agent’s attention. He kept walking. “H-”

“Miss Potts?” said an agent to her left - a kind-looking woman holding something oblong and shiny.

“Stark,” corrected Pepper, keeping a hint of coldness out of her tone.

“Mrs. Stark,” the agent amended. She offered Pepper the oblong thing, avoiding her eyes. “Morgan found this in her security room. She said it turns off the protocol, and that only her or you can do it.”

Pepper took the object and turned it over. A soft blue fingerprint scanner glowed, embedded in smooth metal. “Is Dr. Banner still-”

“The Hulk? No, he’s Banner, curled up in the living room.”

“I was going to say inside.”

The agent winced.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Pepper said, offering a gentle smile, “Thank you.”

The agent smiled weakly back and hurried away.

“I’m going inside,” Pepper told a nearby agent, armed to the teeth, standing with his team. “I’ll have my suit. Don’t send anyone else in after me.”

“We’ll have people on standby,” he said, gesturing at the group. They ran to their positions around the house as Pepper approached, and only then did Pepper feel a twinge of fear. Even if Bruce was no longer the Hulk, he was… temperamental in this state. And had just destroyed her house.

She went through the motions of disabling the security system and walking into the wreckage. What she saw confirmed the living room had gotten the worst of it, but she did her best not to make a show of taking the damage in, because Bruce Banner was sitting on the once-gray carpet (now white with dust) very-much awake and staring at her with an expression there were no words to describe. Her stomach lurched; it was the same expression Rhodey had worn standing over Tony’s burned body. There had been something so final in Rhodey’s eyes then, just as there was in Bruce’s now; they were at the end of the line, staring into the abyss ahead.

“Bruce…” said Pepper, stopping where she stood in the doorway.

He said nothing.

“Bruce-”

“What did I do to them?” he interrupted, wrapping his arms closer around his knees until they dug into his collarbones.

Pepper hesitated. Telling him would crush him. But not telling him… it would be worse if he found out from a random agent. She took a deep breath, her hand beginning to shake as an image of Natasha, splayed like a doll, flashed in her head. “Morgan is fine,” she said slowly.

“And Natasha?” he said sharply.

“She’s being operated on,” Pepper said.

He flinched, and she cringed. He looked out of place, out of time. She hadn’t seen this Bruce in years.

“Is she going to be okay?”

“They don’t know yet.”

His fist tightened. Only his eyes were visible above his knees, but she didn’t need to see anything more to understand. Tears were practically shoving themselves back into his eyes. He would never allow himself that.

“We can go see her,” Pepper said, “Morgan and Maria are waiting for us.”

“Go without me,” he said, avoiding her eyes.

“Bruce, that’s ludicrous.” She couldn’t deal with this right now. He was acting exactly as he had years ago, and this look on him was old. It came from a time Pepper did not care to relive. “We don’t have time for this. Natasha is dying, Bruce, again!”

Bruce flinched, but Pepper wasn’t finished.

“Didn’t you sacrifice yourself for another chance?” Tears welled in her eyes as she pictured Natasha’s broken body at the bottom of a freezing cliff, an image she hadn’t allowed herself to dwell on. “She deser-”

“You think I don’t know she deserves better?! I might have just killed her! Her blood’s on a tree outside!” He lifted his head up. His chin all the way up to his nose was splattered with red. “It’s on me!” It rimmed the curve of his thumb and index finger, as if, in a larger state, he held her up to his eye.

Dread filled Pepper, and without registering her legs moving she was at the door. There was no trace of green in Bruce’s eyes, but he looked like he could power through buildings all on his own. It was all she could do to remember her suit, thrumming beneath her skin.

“Pepper, I almost murdered your daughter!” Bruce said, driving a knife into Pepper’s heart.

“That wasn’t you!” she insisted, holding out her hands in a defensive gesture. “You risked this to save Natasha, right? This is what you were willing to let happen for just a chance! Don’t you think-” Pepper’s voice faltered. “Don’t you think there’s still a chance?”

“This was my chance,” Bruce shrugged, all traces of anger gone.

This frustrated her more, this resignation. She couldn’t imagine Natasha ever tolerating this. Maybe she didn’t. Whatever they had didn’t work, and Pepper would not be surprised if this was why. He looked like he was thinking the same thing. Had Pepper been a crueller person she would’ve said so.

Instead she approached him, waiting for him to look up (and avoided the red shining on his chin). “Bruce, look at me.”

He looked up.

“You care about Natasha, right?”

He opened his mouth. Pepper gave him a look. He nodded.

“She cares about you, right?”

He opened his mouth again, but shut it. He nodded.

“So what reason could there be that she wouldn’t want you to be there? She doesn’t like being spoken for and I don’t want to have to. So-”

“Mommy?”

Pepper turned. Somehow, her genius daughter had slipped through the entire S.H.I.E.L.D. guard. The familiar combination of pride and exasperation flared in her chest.

“Maria says Auntie Nat needs you,” she said, impatience that was far too exhausted tinging her high voice.

Bruce was out the door before Pepper could say anything. Finally. 

Pepper followed, taking Morgan’s hand as she passed.

Pepper knew Bruce shut down easily. It was obvious in the way he closed in on himself, physically and socially. He sat beside Maria, eyes dark, staring at the floor. Sometimes Morgan would look over at him and Pepper would squeeze her hand. Her little daughter eyed Bruce with sympathy beyond her years, tears welled in her eyes. A little snot ran down her nose that she wiped away with her sleeve, smearing dust above her mouth.

Pepper tsked and used her thumb to wipe it.

The small noise made Bruce jump. As hard as she tried she couldn’t help but pity him. It had been a lot easier before, when a volatile and destructive force inside him had been his only problem; but now, she realized, he was dealing with so much loss. More than any of the rest of them. Pepper had lost one of her closest friends (briefly) and her husband. Rhodey lost two best friends. Bruce lost his two best friends, his girlfriend? his team, and his short-lived safety, quick as a snap. Pepper’s heart squeezed as she watched him. His senses seemed to be heightened post-Hulk the way every little noise made him flinch. Even the tiny blinking light on the ceiling looked like too much for him by the way he kept his eyes down. She couldn’t imagine.

The rest of the flight was silent. Maria Hill, more subdued than usual, stared fixedly at one spot on the wall and didn’t move. Morgan seemed to be avoiding sniffing, electing to let it run rather than make noise. Bruce wasn’t curled up, but he looked like he wanted to disappear. Natasha’s blood still shone on his face, crusted in some places but otherwise slick as oil. He didn’t dare try and wipe it off, as if it might take his skin with it. Pepper just watched him with pity, and a great deal of fear. Every time she pictured Natasha in a hospital bed, her anxiety multiplied; and by the time the quinjet landed she was practically nauseous.

The four of them, Morgan dragged behind by a tiny hand, ran off the jet almost before the hatch was fully open. A doctor lead them, sprinting down a linoleum hallway where nurses crowded and carts full of who-knows-what blocked their path. When they finally reached the open door at the end of the hallway, Pepper was in hysterics. Shoving past three nurses, she and Bruce wedged themselves in, just as Helen Cho was stepping out.

“Pepper, wait,” said the doctor. She eyed Bruce, wearing nothing besides his tattered pants and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

“Helen, he’s stable,” Pepper started to argue. “They checked his heart rate on the quinjet, and-”

“I was just going to ask,” Helen countered, nodding at Morgan. “If you want me to take Morgan off your hands while you go in.” She lowered her voice. “Seeing Natasha in the state you can imagine she’s in might be distressing for a child.”

“Oh,” Pepper blinked, taking a deep breath. “Of course. Sorry, I…” Pepper shook her head, clearing it and picking Morgan up, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. “You’re going to go with Dr. Cho for a little bit, okay? Be a good girl.”

If Morgan wasn’t as exhausted as she was, she might have argued, but she allowed Pepper to hand her off to Dr. Cho without a peep, her head falling onto her shoulder sleepily as Pepper thanked the doctor.

“No problem.” Dr. Cho replied. For the first time since Pepper had known her, she seemed to hesitate before adding, “I did everything I could for Natasha. I… I’m so sorry if it isn’t enough.”

Pepper’s stomach dropped

Bruce had already gone in Natasha’s hospital room while Pepper had been talking to Dr. Cho. She found him standing at the foot of the bed, frozen like a statue. “I did this,” he whispered, and she saw what he was talking about. It was worse than she imagined. 

Natasha’s face was unrecognizable, swollen and discolored with bruises. Half of her head had been shaven, presumably from the surgery that left a trail of ugly stitching along her scalp. Every inch of her exposed skin that wasn’t bruised was as white as the pristine bedsheets. There was a tube down her throat, breathing for her, and three different I.V.’s going into her arms.

Pepper’s knees buckled. She collapsed into a chair. This was the same woman whose energy thrummed and thrashed, whose lipstick shone like her eyes, and whose skin glowed with life as she entered Pepper’s life with an infuriating smirk and a mission that saved it.

“Will she have brain damage?” Maria asked the attending nurse in a thick voice.

“With the head injury she sustained, there’s a fifty-five percent chance.” The nurse answered. “It would be an eighty percent chance if we didn’t have Dr. Cho’s technology. We won’t know for sure until she wakes up, which she can’t until her body recovers enough for us to take her out of the medically induced coma.”

“Will she even live that long?” Bruce asked roughly. The young nurse faltered, and Pepper took pity on him.

“We understand. May we have a moment alone with her?”

He nodded and wheeled a cart out of the room.

Maria’s phone buzzed. She sighed through gritted teeth. “Fury. I need to take this.” She said, and stepped back into the hall.

Pepper pulled a chair up beside Natasha’s bed, reaching for one of her hands and rubbing her thumb along icy skin. Natasha had on chipped black nail polish. Pepper wondered when she did them. “Morgan would love it if you let her paint your nails,” she told Natasha quietly. “She’s always asking me if she can paint her own, and I tell her no because she’ll make a mess.” Pepper swallowed hard. She couldn’t do this. “You saved my daughter’s life, and for that I owe you mine. From the moment I met you, you’ve been saving my family. You saved Tony more times than I can count. I might have even been jealous at one point, but that was before I realized keeping Tony in check was a job for more than me. There are so many people who love you, Natasha. Morgan does. I do. Tony did. You’ll-” Pepper tore her eyes from Natasha, looking up at the ceiling, holding back tears. “You’ll give him our love, won’t you? If anything happens.” She exhaled shakily, looking back down. “But that’s a worst-case scenario, and you’ve been beating those your whole life.” Pepper watched the shallow rise and fall of Natasha’s chest. Besides the heart monitor it was the only sign she was alive. Her hands were cold as ice, her eyes still as stone.

Bruce remained at the foot of the bed, afraid to get any closer. They listened to the beep of the heart monitor in silence for a long time. She’d never liked the sound. It felt invasive, intruding on a private moment.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce choked. Pepper looked up. His eyes were locked on Natasha. Maybe she was the intruder. “When you told me to run I wish I’d said yes… It would have been the only decision I’ve ever made that I don’t regret-” his voice broke, and the lonely doctor stumbled out into the hallway.

Pepper rethought everything she assumed about what Bruce and Natasha used to have. Maybe their pieces didn’t quite fit, but neither had she and Tony’s. Pepper could see clearly now how much Bruce cared about her.

Maybe he always had.


End file.
